


Acherontia Atropos

by Solrika



Series: Crossbones [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M, ghost au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 18:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8458930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solrika/pseuds/Solrika
Summary: Jack keeps forgetting something.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started this AU concept with McGenji week, and decided to expand it into its very own series of vignettes. Here's a little backstory for Jack and Gabe.

Hospital lights are always too bright.

Jack groans, twists his head to the side. Coughs, rasps through a dry mouth, “Gabe?” Something pulls at the back of his mind. He’s forgetting something. Something--

The lights click off. “Here, sunshine,” Gabe croons, voice almost as raspy as Jack’s. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

“Where...”

“Here, cariño. Right here.” A shadow looms over Jack, soft-edged and familiar, and he sighs in relief when Gabriel tugs his blanket higher, smooths a hand through his hair. Jack turns into the touch, the corners of his mouth quirking up. Gabe chuckles, presses cool lips to Jack’s forehead. 

Jack drifts, lulled by Gabe petting his hair. The other man’s singing something, wordless and soothing. It’s almost enough to pull away that nagging feeling that Jack’s missing something here, that he’s forgetting... something...

“Go to sleep, dumbass,” Gabe hums fondly, and Jack sighs and obeys. It’ll come to him later.

~

There’s something wrong with Gabe’s hands. The fingers combing through Jack’s hair are gritty, as if he’s been working in the garden.  

He frowns to himself, nose scrunching. Gabe snickers, like he always has when faced with Jack’s just-out-of-bed expressions. “You look like a rabbit.”

“Do not,” Jack retorts, out of habit, and opens his eyes. The room’s still dark--Gabe must be keeping the lights off for him. 

Gabe himself is sitting just out of view, and when Jack cranes his head he can just make out the edge of a shoulder, the glint of Gabe’s teeth in the darkness, curving up in a smile. 

Jack smiles back, and then winces, feeling it tug at a cut he wasn’t aware of until this moment. Raising his arm takes effort, and he almost slaps himself in the face when he tries to feel what’s happened to him. Gabe saves him, catching his hand before it can impact with the full force of supersoldier muscles. 

“What happened?” Jack asks, a rising sense of wrongness in his chest. He tries to scrabble upright, only succeeds in pitching himself sideways against the pillows.

“Shit,” Gabriel says, catching him, and then, “stay still, Jack, Dios.”

“What happened?” Jack says, muffled against Gabriel’s chest. His cheek presses against armor, and the sense of _wrong_ peaks. “Why are you in armor? What happened?”

When he speaks, Gabe’s voice is too careful. “Do you remember our last mission?”

“No--”

“Our strike team moving against Hel,” Gabriel prompts gently. “The bombs.”

Jack still can’t remember, but he can extrapolate--he has a vague memory of the briefing, an even vaguer memory of prepping to move against the omnium and its god program. He can’t help the flinch when he ventures, “Did I do something stupid like a suicide run?”

Gabe clutches him tighter at that. “No, thank Dios. No.” He runs a hand through Jack’s hair, presses a kiss to his head. “No, you were just caught in the edge of the blast. It was someone else.”

“Who? Not Ana?”

“No, she’s safe too. Farther back than the rest of them.” Gabriel eases him back onto the pillows, resettles the blankets. “Don’t worry, sunshine, you were the worst hurt. Everyone’s okay.”

There’s something off in Gabe’s voice, like he’s lying, and Jack can’t help frowning up at him. “Why’re you still in armor? Are we under attack?”

“Didn’t want to bother getting undressed before sitting by you,” Gabe says, voice sheepish.

This, at least, rings true. “Dumbass,” Jack sighs, more relieved than anything else.

“ _Your_ dumbass,” Gabe replies, and pulls the blankets up. “Go back to sleep, sunshine. You’re still healing. Let your body rest.”

Something’s still wrong, but Jack closes his eyes and lets it go. 

~

Gabe is gone the next time Jack wakes up. He blinks at the bright lights, at the nurse checking something on the monitors, and vaguely hopes that this means someone was able to pull Gabriel away to eat and clean up and--just maybe--have a nap that isn’t in a hospital chair. 

“Hi,” he rasps to the nurse, and then has to be subjected to the doctors being called in to check him over.

He learns that he’s going to get some impressive shrapnel scars on his face. He learns that Reinhardt lost an eye. He learns his own left leg is missing from the thigh down, and doesn’t know how to feel about it. 

“You’re lucky,” the doctor says, gently patting Jack’s shoulder. “We can easily replace it with a prosthetic, and honestly--being that close to ground zero, you could have lost much worse.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, and gives her his best things-are-fine smile. It wouldn’t fool Gabe, or even Reinhardt, honestly, but she smiles back and pats his shoulder again like she buys it. _Fucking civilians_ , Jack thinks, and then feels bad for thinking it.  

“Can I have the mission report?” he says instead, when the doctor’s done with all her tests. 

She trades looks with the nurse, gives him an apologetic smile. “I don’t think it’s finished yet.”

He huffs a disbelieving laugh, shakes his head. “Gabe must really be worried about me.”

The doctor’s smile looks, for an instant, like a rictus. She shakes her head, lays her hand on his shoulder. “Sir... Commander Reyes is dead. Lt. Amari is the one compiling the report.” 

Something feels wrong.

“He visited me last night,” Jack says, looking at her like she’s the one who sustained the head wound, not him. “He was right here.”

The doctor and the nurse look at each other again. She says, voice careful, “The painkillers you’re on can cause very realistic dreams. It’s not uncommon.”

“No, he was here,” Jack says, _insists_ , chest tightening and stomach dropping and feeling wrong, wrong, _wrong_ , “he was here, he was right in that chair!” 

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says, pats his arm again.

Jack barely manages to resist shrugging her off with a snarl. “He’s not dead.”

“I’m very sorry.” She pats his shoulder again, and Jack wants to be anywhere but this bed. “He died taking out the omnium, I’m sorry.” 

It’s such a fucking stupid, heroic thing to do, and that’s what makes Jack think she’s telling the truth.

He feels all of eighteen again, stepping into the SEP base with panic squeezing his ribs together. But there’s no Gabe to gently knock against his shoulder, murmur, “Breathe, tenderpaw,” with more kindness in his voice than anyone had the right to--just this doctor with her smile that’s looking more and more fixed by the minute, the nurse standing helplessly by. There’s not going to _be_ Gabe, there’s not going to be retiring after the war and getting that little apartment in San Francisco and getting a dog and a guinea pig because Gabe has a fondness for things that are round and furry, there’s not going to be more Halloween parties and talks late at night and kisses on his forehead--

Jack gulps air, tries to breathe past the fear constricting his throat, ignores the doctor when she leans closer, ignores her asking, “Sir? Are you alright?” Resists snarling at her, because _no, he’s not fucking alright_ \-- His ribs feel like they’re collapsing, terror rising up his spine, he can’t breathe and there’s no Gabe, no Gabe--

The lights flicker, and Jack doesn’t notice the doctor stepping away because he’s ripped a stitch, he’s curling into a fetal position as the panic attacks he hasn’t experienced since high school return with a vengeance. A monitor clatters over and a chair drags across the floor and a voice says, “Morrison! _Jack_ , breathe, c’mon, with me--”

Hands cup his face and Jack shudders, gasps, and the voice says, “There we go, sunshine, another, you’re doing so good, c’mon, close your eyes and just breathe with me, there we go...”

Jack breathes until he’s lightheaded and then until the world stops spinning, until he’s slumped against cool, hard armor and grimy fingers are carding through his hair. 

“They said you were dead,” he tells Gabe.

“I know,” Gabe answers.

“You’re not, though,” Jack says, and wishes it doesn’t sound so much like a question.

Gabe’s hands still. 

“You’re not,” Jack says, and feels Gabe’s chest rise and fall when he sighs. The lights flicker off one last time. He thinks he hears the doctor whimper. 

“Keep your eyes closed, sunshine,” Gabriel whispers, and hugs Jack closer. 


End file.
